Re: Talk about your troubles

Dagwood, I know how you feel. My son stopped wanting to hang out with me a couple years ago. He gets overly embarassed that I listen to the same music he does in the car and when I ask how his day was, he just says fine and puts his earbuds back in to listen to his Ipod.

Re: Talk about your troubles

I just had one of the most troubling phone calls I think I have ever received from a friend of mine in Florida.

Last week, her daughter received a phone call from her father. Well, let me back up. My friend has been divorced for several years and is remarried. I have on occasion been in the presence of her ex and have always thought he is the biggest moron on the planet. After what I heard today, I no longer think that. I think he has to be the poorest excuse of a man and human being I have ever had the displeasure to meet. My friend has had constant struggles with him over the years concerning child support, visitation, domestic disputes, several times had to call the police because he was harrassing her and the kids, etc.
The kids are now 17 and 20.

So back to the story. Last Thurs., her daughter gets a call from her father. The mom is listening to her daughter's side of the conversation which goes something like this: "you need to call the police. You need to call 911, I can't believe you didn't do anything, call the police, call the police, call the police."
She hangs up on him and begins frantically dialing 911 while trying to tell her mom what is going on.

Her dad's cousin showed up at the house asking for a shovel, gas can and flashlight. When the dad goes outside to get the items, the car door is open on the cousins car and a woman is laying in the grass next to the car, she is tied up and she is pleading with the father to please call 911. The cousin shoves her back in the car and tells the father to "forget about this". So instead of calling the police, he calls his 17 year old daughter.

Meanwhile, the woman abducted has a 6 month old and 2 year old. Her husband has come home, found the kids alone, her purse and keys home and she is not. He is concerned and calls the police who put out an "alert". He then calls his father in law who is a 26 year sherriff's deputy veteran in the next county and high ranking deputy. The father immediately pulls some strings and gets his men and the other county to go investigate. A neighbor reports seeing a green camaro parked in the driveway earlier.

At the same time my friends daughter calls 911, another 911 call comes in and the woman is obviously in distress, pleading with someone and says her full name. Then a man's voice yells "where's my phone" and the call is cut off. They trace the call and verify the name of the owner of the phone and that he owns a green camaro. Now a BOLO is issued. They think she got the phone off his belt when he threw her back in the car at the house where he got the shovel from his cousin.

Helicopters and dogs are called in and hundreds of people join in the search.
This started at 2:30 and at 9:30 the man was finally spotted and pulled over. The woman is not in the car, but the man is wet and muddy and the shovel is also wet and muddy. He is arrested on suspicioun of kidnapping. Well sadly, this story does not have a happy ending. They found the woman the next day, dead.

Oh and another 911 call comes in at some point from a woman traveling on a busy highway reporting seeing a green camero and hearing a woman calling for help and seeing hands slap at the windows.

What absolutely horrifies and disgusts me is that the father of my friends child had the chance to do the right thing and yet he did not and now the death of a young woman and mother rests on his head. I would like to think that ANY man seeing a woman tied up and pleading for 911 to be called, would do SOMETHING. Not this idiot. When he finally calls 911 over an hour later, he gives some crazy story which he has changed now 4 times and has called his daughter over 30 times asking her to "change her story". But her story is on a 911 tape and can't be changed. She has told her father not to call her anymore and that she wants NO contact with him whatsoever. It's gotten so bad, that my friend has had to call the police and they have had to tell the father to cease and desist harrassing his daughter. The 20 year old son called his dad and told him he was the worst excuse for a man, he's ever met. He had the chance to be a hero and because of his inactions and his GIVING the killer the shovel, a woman is now dead and her death is on his hands and he hopes God knows what he did and judges him for it. He also told his dad he'd better leave town because the police brotherhood is a very close one and this woman was the daughter of a deputy and that he is now a "marked" man by every cop in 2 counties.
This idiot also has a lawn care business and since his name has been splashed all over the papers and his inactions, people have been calling cancelling their lawn contracts with him. GOOD.
To me, he's just as guilty, has just as much blood on his hands for not trying to help this woman.

I am just appalled that any man would turn a blind eye to something like this and THEN involve his teenage daughter and after that THREATEN her into changing her story.

It has been all over the news, but I don't live there anymore, so I didn't see anything until today.

Interestingly enough, another friend of mine who is a lawyer in this town was asked to represent the accused killer and turned him down flat saying she didn't need that kind of negative publicity and her concious wouldn't allow her to represent him.

I am just sick. I feel so badly for the woman's family and her poor motherless children now. I just cannot believe anyone would act like this idiot father and NOT help and then just be an ass after the fact as well.

If you pray, please pray for Amber Denise Lee's family and her poor husband and children who will never know their mother.
And pray justice is done and that the killer and his idiot cousin (the dad of my friend's kid) pay heavily for this.

I just cannot imagine the terror this woman went through, especially thinking that she was going to get help from someone and he did not come through to save her.

Re: Talk about your troubles

Originally Posted by dagwood;2767885;

Small trouble, but my baby is growing up. She is reading and asked me how to pronounce p-r-i-n-c-i-p-l-e. I told her and she seemed confused so I explained the difference between principal and principle. I swear I heard crickets. I have this scary feeling puberty is on the way and she will no longer wish to acknowledge my existence.

If it makes you and Buglover feel any better, they DO get over it. I didn't want to be seen with my mother while I was a teenager, but by my late teens I was over it and would join her in making fun of my younger sister who was in that phase. Now I'm 32 and we still take vacations together. So don't worry, they'll grow out of it.

Re: Talk about your troubles

Oh my gosh, that is just such an awful story. I know there are awful and stupid people in world, but it's still shocking when you hear an example like that. I'm just stunned that your friend's ex-husband did nothing to help that kidnapped woman when she was begging him to call 911. And then to drag his daughter into his mess, what a horrible, cowardly man.

My thoughts will be with your friend's family and the family of that murdered young woman.

Re: Talk about your troubles

Well this just gets more unbelievable.
My husband came home and I was telling him about it and I mentioned the name of the murdered girls family and my husband went white. He just stared at me and said really quiet: "was her dad's name Rick?". When I said yes, I swear he went even whiter. He said: "when I was growing up in Englewood, he was my best friend. We played little league together, we played together and went fishing together, we were best friends".

I have only seen my husband cry twice in 21 years and tonight was the 3rd time. I have heard stories about him and his friend over the years, but never connected the names until he said that tonight. He was very visibly upset and went immediately to take a shower. After he got out, he called another friend that knew him and this poor father. Turns out they may be able to pin charges on this poor excuse for a human being after all that didn't help. They think he may have helped dispose of some evidence after the fact. There was also more information about the gun and the 911 calls that weren't in the papers. There is so much evidence linking the killer that there will be no problem getting a conviction as the killer was so stupid, he still had the gun, shovel and other evidence on him. There was evidence in his house that she was there and there is probably going to be DNA evidence as she was also sexually assualted. That wasn't in the paper.

My husband has spent the last hour trying to compose a letter to his old friend. I have rarely seem him so upset and he told me as a father of a daughter, he hopes he never has to know what this father went through as they searched for and then found his daughter and as a father he cannot BELIEVE that the "ex" did not try to help this woman and choose to involve his own teenage daughter instead.

I know there is horror in this world and I read and watch the news, but I guess when you end up having met or known some of the people involved, the stories actually become more real somehow. I just cannot imagine what the family went through or is going through. I cannot imagine how you cannot help another human being and live with the fact that you could have saved her life. I just don't want to imagine any of it.

I know this sounds selfish, but seeing MY husbands reaction shook my world tonight. He is usually so together and composed. He is a "tough" guy, but tender. It's just that I don't really see this kind of emotional side to him.

It's consumed my family for hours now. It's a story that none of us can seem to let go of. I think of her panic and despair and hope and dashed hopes and terror and I think of a father mourning his daughter and a husband mourning his wife and 2 little children that will never know their mother. And I think of the absolute morons and idiots and CRIMINALS and it just makes me so damn mad.